Collaborative Governance: Theoretical Framework And Model

For the last thirty years, the interaction among government,enterprises, non-governmental organizations and citizens has become moreand more common in solving social problems all over the globe andtherefore has attracted scholars to study this atmosphere. Nowadays,scholars tend to use “collaborative governance” to address the collaborationamong different sectors and collaborative governance has become the newtrend of the public management theory. This new trend can be practicallyhelpful to the social development of our country and to the academicresearch when China is trying to reform its social management pattern.How to better learn from the western theory, in order to enrich China’sstudy on public management theory, and then to better carry out innovativesocial management practices? This has become an urgent issue to beaddressed. This issue has three parts. First, study the concept of“collaborative governance” in the western literature, which is thefoundation to connect Chinese scholars with the western academic world.Second, study collaborative governance from a theoretical perspective andelaborate a theoretical framework of collaborative governance. Third,establish a collaborative governance model that can be used in different policy sectors. In order to answer the above three questions, the author firststudied over150books and papers regarding collaborative governance andthen carried out a systematic analysis on related theoretical discussions anddiversified cases.The author first discusses different definitions of collaborativegovernance in western literature, compares collaboration governance withsome related concepts and then defines collaborative governance in hisown way. With the definition problem solved, the author trys to construct atheoretical framework for collaborative governance. Studying collaborativegovernance from a theoretical perspective has not been thoroughlydiscussed in the western literature and the author introduces five of them,namely Institutional Analysis and Development Framework, PolicyNetwork Theory, New Institutionalism, Resource Dependence Theory andCollaborative Advantage Theory, with the last one as the foundation theoryfor the theoretical framework. Then, based on this theoretical framework,the auther elaborates a new comprehensive model for collaborativegovernance by absorbing usful elements from models in the literature. Inthe end, the author applies the new comprehensive model to foreign anddomestic cases and concludes the dissertation with suggestions to China’spublic management reform.This dissertation is the first attempt to systematically analyzecollaborative governance in the western literature and to elaborate atheoretical framework and a comprehensive model which can be applied todiversified policy sectors. This dissertation can be called innovative in three aspects. First, the topic itself is quite new and popular in westliterature. Second, studying collaborative governance from a theoreticalperspective is not only new in China but also a weak point in the west.Third, the content can be new in four aspects.1. Based on a thoroughanalysis of different definitions of collaborative governance in westernliterature, a new definition of collaborative governance is first given by thisdissertation.2. This dissertation first uses Collaborative Advantage Theoryas the foundation theory to establish a theoretical framework.3. A newcomprehensive collaborative governance model is elaborated.4. Thisdissertation first uses collaboration engine and collaboration action todescribe collaborative processes.